A Summer Wind...

I love nature, I love the weather, and I especially love this time of year.

Summer’s coming to a close, and I’m glad to see it end. The night breeze is cooler than it’s been in ages, and it’s a pleasure to turn off the air conditioning and open up the windows again to hear the leaves rustling. After falling asleep to the air conditioning’s groan all summer, I don’t believe there’s a better tonic for sleeping than pulling up a light blanket and listening to the crickets making their annual plea for love.

There’s a phrase from “Charlotte’s Web” that comes to my mind when the crickets start chirping. “Goodbye summer, goodbye…how many nights until frost? Goodbye summer, goodbye.”

It’s time for me, the cook, to stop thinking about tomatoes, summer squash and fresh basil, and start thinking about making fresh tomato sauce for the autumn and winter soups that I’ll make in the months to come. It’s also time to make pesto; there’s nothing nicer then fresh pesto on any pasta in oh, January. I’ll post my recipe next week.

It’s also fresh fig time. Paul’s landlord has these huge (and I mean ginormous) fig trees that grow all of the way up to the second story of the house.

It’s become its own little ecosystem over the past couple of weeks. There’s a little family of Northern Flickers in there! Dad (with the yellow striping around his eyes), Mom and the whole family of their teenagers, making an awful racket that sounds wonderful to these ears.

Flickers are part of the woodpecker family, and they are big, lovely birds, local to New Jersey. They’re also seed-eaters, and watching them suck out the fig seeds is an amazing sight. I’ll try to catch some photos this weekend.

Really, it’s all about being aware, being quiet, and enjoying the turn of the seasons.